“I have had Hercules fasten an iron shutter over the window in my study—the one through which I can see Tad’s house when I sit at my desk. I cannot bear to look at anything that reminds me of him.”
“There!” shouted all the Winnebagos at once. “That was the reason for putting up the iron shutter! The mystery is solved!”
“Poor Uncle Jasper!” said Nyoda pityingly. “What a Spartan he was! How thoroughly he set about removing every memory of Tad from his mind! Think of covering up that beautiful pane of glass because he couldn’t bear to look through it at the house of his friend!” She finished reading the entry:
“Hercules demurred at covering up the window—he admired it more than anything else in the house—so to give him a satisfactory reason for doing so I told him the devil would come in through that gateway some day and I was putting up the shutter to keep him out. There’s one thing sure; Hercules will never take that shutter down as long as he lives—he’s scared nearly into a Chinaman.”
“So that’s why Hercules threw such a fit when we took the shutter off!” said Sherry. “He thought that now the devil would come in and get him. Poor, superstitious old nigger!”
“I wonder if Tad and Sylvia went to live in the house on Harrisburg Hill,” said Sahwah curiously. “He doesn’t say whether they did or not.”
“Oh, I wonder if they did!” cried Sylvia, with eager interest. “To think I’ve been living in the same house they lived in—if they did live there,” she added. “But how strange it seems to hear them call that place Harrisburg Hill. It is called Main Street Hill now.”
“I wonder what Tad and Sylvia did after they were married,” said Hinpoha, with romantic curiosity. “Did they stay in Oakwood, or did they go away? Is there any more, Nyoda?”
Nyoda was already glancing down the next page, which was written over with lines in blacker ink, and broader and heavier strokes of the pen, which seemed somehow to express grim satisfaction on the part of Uncle Jasper. Grim satisfaction Uncle Jasper must indeed have felt when he wrote those lines, for misfortune had overtaken the one who had caused his own anguish of heart. The entry told how Tad had become staff physician at one of the large army posts in the west. There was an epidemic of typhoid and quite a few of the men were ill at once, all requiring the same kind of medicine. Through carelessness in making up a certain medicine he put in a deadly poison instead of the harmless ingredient he intended to put in, and a dozen men died of the dose. There was a tremendous stir about the matter, and the newspapers all over the country were full of it. He was court-martialed, and though he was acquitted, the mistake being entirely accidental, the matter had gained such publicity that his career as a doctor was ruined. He left the army and fled out of the country, taking Sylvia with him. Some months later the papers brought the announcement of both their deaths from yellow fever in Cuba. Again the handwriting began to waver on the last sentence. “She is dead.” In those three little words the Winnebagos seemed to hear the echo of the breaking of a strong man’s heart. There were no more entries.
“Isn’t it perfectly thrilling!” gulped Hinpoha, with eyes overflowing again. “It’s better than any book I ever read! And to think we never suspected there was anything like that connected with your Uncle Jasper! There, now, Katherine Adams, what did I tell you? You said he was a born bachelor, and just look at the romance he had!”